


Confidence (you're full of shit)

by sinaddict



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-28
Updated: 2005-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-08 22:25:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinaddict/pseuds/sinaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>None of that psychobabble bullshit about victims applies to Veronica Mars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confidence (you're full of shit)

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through "Leave it to Beaver". This is a kind of companion piece to [we all fall down](http://sinaddict.livejournal.com/42961.html). Thanks to [para1](para1.livejournal.com/), [empty_marrow](http://empty_marrow.livejournal.com/), and herowlness for looking over the five million drafts of this and taking the time to make comments on them all.

**I.**

  


_"You don't want the truth. You make up your own truth." -- Memento_

.

Don Lamb has never been the type of guy to look back on his past and regret anything he did. Send the wrong guy to prison for murder? Oops, shit happens. But this? This, Lamb is _sure_ he is going to end up regretting eventually. Probably when he, A) loses his job, or B) loses a limb or appendage he values greatly at the hand of an infuriated Keith Mars.

Sex on the job, while definitely frowned upon, probably wouldn't get him canned in and of itself. Sex on the job, up against his desk, in the middle of the afternoon with a pile of reports for the mayor due in four hours? Still, probably not enough to get him fired.

All of the above with one Veronica Mars? _That's_ going to get him fired.

"You do know I only did this to shut you up, right?" he says coldly as he zips his pants back up, and even as he does it, he knows he should feel guilty about fucking a just-turned eighteen-year-old who's currently in therapy twice a week (against her protests, he knows) to help her deal with the attempt on her life and her mother's death.

He should, but none of that psychobabble bullshit about victims applies to Veronica Mars.

She just laughs softly, that annoying, know-it-all laugh that never fails to get under his skin as she straightens her clothes and slides off his desk. (_He's never going to be able to sit at the damn desk again without getting hard._) "You wouldn't have to shut me up if you'd just admit it already."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, really?" she folds her arms over her chest and gives him a skeptical look that gives her a little too much of a resemblance to her father. "So, the people in charge of the Crimestopper reward just suddenly decided, after a year and a half, that _I_ deserve the hundred grand for solving Lilly's murder?"

It makes him feel a little better that she's apparently not enough of a detective to have figured out that Crimestoppers wasn't behind the reward money she came into that morning. Jake Kane was. (And if she ever does find out that he arranged for the D.A. to plead down Kane's charges in exchange for the reward, he fully intends to say that somebody else did it.)

"You know what I think?" she asks without waiting for an answer, and he thinks Keith had to have sat down with her at some point and taught her the same interrogation techniques he used to teach to the rookies. "I think you feel _sorry_ for me."

He would have taken a hell of a lot more offense to that if she hadn't sounded so bitter and angry herself. "Bullshit," he rolls his eyes. "You bring everything on yourself. Why should I feel sorry for you?"

He thinks he should probably find it a little disturbing _that_ made her less angry.

Then she smiles brightly and cheerfully says, "Thanks, _Deputy_!"

And he contemplates telling her he does pity her just to wipe that smirk off her face.

 

**[the coldest of the cool, you're nothing special here]**

He has a bad habit of playing with fire where anyone named Mars is concerned.

Taunting Keith about his kid was just a way to amuse himself at first. (_"She's almost as cold as you are."_) Now? Now, he's sleeping with Keith's kid, and taunting him probably isn't the smartest thing to be doing under the circumstances.

Doesn't ever stop him from sticking the knife in and turning it just a bit, though.

_"Jake Kane is guilty."_

_"Yeah, he's guilty of fucking your wife."_

He's a pyromaniac where anyone named Mars is concerned.

~

Taunting Veronica is just foreplay. _Most_ of the time. "Jesus, I was wrong," he shakes his head in disbelief. "You're not _almost_ as cold as your father. You're a fucking nuclear winter compared to him."

"Why?" she asks with a single eyebrow raised, like she didn't _just_ ask him to get her the photos from her mother's autopsy, and Lamb has moved beyond being grudgingly impressed with her stoicism into being faintly suspicious she might be a sociopath.

"Why?" he repeats, looking at her like she's insane. (She probably is.) "Are you kidding me?"

She just shrugs and gives him a look of faux-innocence as she says, "You know, I seem to remember somebody once telling me to get a backbone. Was that you or Drunk Larry in front of Top Foods?"

"Must've been me," he replies with a smirk. "Drunk Larry's usually too busy asking about your hourly rates."

Watching her mask slip the slightest bit should've given him more pleasure than it did.

Then Keith's in his office doorway, and Veronica's playing the victim again, her lower lip trembling as she brushes past her father, and Lamb is wondering why he keeps falling for that act in the beginning when she's never _not_ been faking it.

"Leave Veronica out of your problems with me," Keith says calmly, and if Lamb hadn't learned to read the expression in Keith's eyes years before, he would've thought that Keith didn't care one way or another.

He's never had to wonder where Veronica picked that up.

"I will when she stops coming to me," he leans back against his desk, folds his arms over his chest and gives his former mentor an arrogant smile, letting the implication behind his taunt sink in before he can't resist voicing it aloud. "Kind of ironic, don't you think, Keith? Your kid hates me, but she still trusts me to tell her the truth more than she trusts you."

Keith turns and leaves without another word, the epitome of control, and Lamb contemplates whether it would be worth it to break that control by calling Keith back into the office and saying, "By the way, I'm fucking your daughter and she loves it as much as you did."

Something tells him the look on Keith's face would make the shitstorm he'd bring down on himself completely worth it.

~

The first night that Lamb got drunk with Keith, Keith had showed up at his apartment door with an entire case of beer and a jumbo pizza with the works. "My wife's fucking Jake Kane," he said flatly.

"You're gonna need more beer."

He'd like to be able to say that the first time he kissed Keith, he was so shit-faced drunk he didn't know what he was actually doing. See, he was completely _wasted_ from drinking Keith under the table (which was really _easy_ since Keith couldn't hold his liquor half as well as Lamb could), and Keith moved first. Lamb just kind of... went along with it.

Yeah, if anyone else ever found out, that would be the story he told.

The actual story was that Lamb only had four beers to Keith's thirteen, Keith was halfway between buzzed and full-out drunk, and Lamb made the first move because he figured he had less of a chance of getting decked since ESPN somewhere along the way got turned to the Spice channel and they were both hard anyway.

He'd like to be able to say it was a one-time thing. If anyone ever found out, he would.

But the real story?

He'd have to be on the verge of alcohol poisoning to ever tell that one.

 

**[this is beginning to feel good, watching you squirm in your shoes]**

There was a time, Lamb remembers, when he couldn't seem to keep it in mind that Keith even had a daughter. Little whatshername was sweet and polite and California-girl blonde like all the girls that didn't catch his eye in the mall or the grocery store or at the beach. He'd start every time Keith mentioned something about the kid, his first reaction being, "Christ, his wife's knocked up?"

His second, almost instantaneous reaction, was something in the way of, "Wonder if it's his."

Keith, he figures, probably would've had the exact same reaction if he found out his wife was pregnant.

In the first four years he worked with Keith, he met little whatshername a handful of times in inconspicuous circumstances like the annual Sheriff's Department barbecue at Dog Beach or the goofy awards ceremony Keith had instituted his second year in office to help keep morale high.

Within a few hours, all he could remember about her was the vague impression of long, blonde hair, and a bubblegum-perky, wholesome attitude that was as boring as it was polite. Pressed, he doubted he could've managed to come up with enough details for a sketch artist to draw an accurate portrait of the girl.

Not that it mattered. Keith kept his kid very separate from his work.

And by extension, very separate from his actual life.

~

The first time he started remembering Veronica instead of 'Little Whatshername', she was barely sixteen and in the back of Sacks' patrol car pointedly ignoring her best friend, who apparently got them into the entire mess.

Keith had been out on a case; Lamb can't remember what it was about now, but he'd let Sacks handle the walking definition of trouble known as Lilly Kane, figuring that Keith's daughter would be easier to handle.

He probably should've learned his lesson that first time when she corrected him about her Miranda rights and refused to say a word until her father arrived, no matter how long and how hard he played the friendly cop who was on her side.

Yeah, he should've left well enough alone then.

Pyromaniac, though.

~

Lamb has Keith's old cruiser.

He made sure it was the exact same car; it seemed fitting that the new sheriff would inherit it along with everything else. (And the car was in line with the taking the same job, the same office, the same uniform, and the same god damn pens.)

He happens to be passing by the Camelot at two in the morning. (Really, he isn't _looking_ for her or anything. He just _happens_ to have the autopsy photos she asked for...) He sees her parked across the street and pulls up next to her to roll his eyes at how damn obvious she's being about her 'surveillance'.

"Yeah, 'cause I'm sure the car parked across the street is what the guy cheating on his wife is thinking about," she nods, giving him that irritating little smirk. "Not that it's any of your business, but I just need the shot of him coming out of the room."

He lifts the file with the photos off the seat next to him and passes it out the window to her with practiced nonchalance. "What's this?" she asks suspiciously, but she's too nosy and too curious to _not_ take the file.

His tone is deliberately casual. "The autopsy photos you asked for."

The slight tremor of her hand as she opens the file is the only hint that she's affected at all. She looks over the photos with the same kind of indifference a seasoned homicide cop would, and he can't resist asking, "Why did you want them?" He doesn't really expect an answer. Or at least, he doesn't expect an _honest_ answer. She'll evade, or she'll lie, but she'll never tell him the complete truth.

Unless the complete truth will knock him down a few steps. Then she'll do it gleefully.

"You said her tox screen didn't show evidence of continuous drug use." Her voice is too calm, too carefully modulated, and he realizes a little too late that he probably shouldn't have gotten her the photos because she's shut herself down into Stepford teenager mode again, which is probably the _least_ pleasant version of her to deal with since she won't respond to his taunts or snide comments when she gets like this. (She takes all the fun out of it when she doesn't respond.) "She doesn't have needle tracks on her arm, and there are bruises."

It doesn't take a psychic to figure out where she's trying to take this. "It's an accidental overdose, Veronica. It's not a murder."

"Says the man who arrested Abel Koontz."

The fact that he walked into that one doesn't piss him off any less.

She snaps the file shut and tosses it aside, finally looking at him with a gaze completely devoid of expression as she tells him flatly, "Park the car."

Fucking Veronica in the backseat of Keith's cruiser -- no, _his_ cruiser (has been _his_ for how many months now?) -- shouldn't seem like as much of a fuck-you to her father as it does. (Especially when she's clearly trying to forget pretty much everything about her life.) But as he's sliding her panties down around her knees and she's shuddering under his fingers as he strokes just a little harder, he can't stop himself from picturing how Keith would react to the scene.

It shouldn't get him off. But it does.

 

**[a million lies to sell yourself]**

There's more than one Veronica.

It took Lamb a while to figure it out, to see how many different personalities she could put on and take off at the drop of a dime. A tiny, miniscule part of him is even a little impressed at how good she is at it.

He doesn't actually put all the pieces together until he finds her (illegally) sitting at a bar, chatting up a suspect in a string of date-rapes in the area, pretending to be a giggly, naive, college student. How she came to be working on a case that involved the scumbag, he can't figure out; he knows there's no way in hell Keith would ever send his kid in as bait even if he was hired to work the case.

Lamb likes to think it's his dedication to his position as sheriff that has him crossing the bar in three goddamn seconds flat as soon as the scumbag puts his hand on Veronica's thigh and she almost imperceptibly tries to shift away. He also likes to think that it's his aversion to the mistreatment of women that makes him break the scumbag's nose in front of fifty (mostly drunken) eyewitnesses.

It's probably more that he's never liked people touching _his_ things.

Veronica flinches at his grip on her arm as he drags her out of the back exit of the bar, the whole time demanding to know what the hell he thinks he's doing, and where does he think he's taking her, and he's so goddamn pissed off that he snaps halfway between the back door and his car, slamming her back into the alley wall, pressing his hands on either side of her head.

He would've missed the flicker of fear if he hadn't been watching her so closely.

"You wanna play Nancy Drew with your dad, fine," he tells her, using the menacing tone he usually reserves for suspects on the verge of confessing, and now he's really watching her to see if the fear is another part she's playing. "Stay out of the department's cases."

She struggles to keep her mask up, but that hint of fear is still there in her eyes. "What the hell are you talking about? What case?"

He growls, "Drop the innocent act."

"But I'm so good at it," she smirks brightly and presses forward into him, hands sliding up his chest to clench fistfuls of his t-shirt, and if he hadn't still been watching her face, he would've missed it.

If he was a total asshole, he would've deliberately tried to scare her more, tried to see how far he could push her before that mask cracked and she actually _looked_ scared, maybe until she cried or tried to push him away. (And yeah, that shouldn't be a turn-on, but the way she gasps when he slams her wrists over her head _is_.)

If he were a better person, he would've taken her home and told Keith to keep an eye on her.

Since he's neither, he lets her play her little sex-kitten part to distract him and sends her home to her father with broken zippers and missing buttons.

He's enough of an asshole to amuse himself wondering how she'll explain it.

 

**[i only want sympathy in the form of you crawling into bed with me]**

The night after she testifies before a grand jury in Aaron Echolls' indictment, Veronica calls his office. Her father had to go to Arizona to track down a skip, she tells him, and if that isn't an invitation for sex, he's not sure what is.

"Yeah? What are you wearing?" he asks as he looks over Sacks' report on a fight that broke out during a typical summer kegger at the beach.

He accidentally crumples the report in his fist when she replies in a sly voice, "What makes you think I'm wearing anything?"

After a few seconds, he gets himself back under control and says, "Be wearing heels when I get there."

"What's the magic word, _Deputy_?"

He hangs up on her.

~

She answers the door in black heels with straps that run up her legs and end in neat little bows behind her knees. She's wearing little black panties too, but he can't bring himself to mind that much because she's on him as soon as he walks through the door, tearing at his shirt and kissing him even as he blindly reaches behind himself to slam the door shut, and she's never acted this desperate for him before.

(He kind of likes it.)

If he were a shrink, he'd think it said something about her state of mind.

Since he's a cop, he considers all the evidence and decides she's just in the mood to get laid.

He tells her that her bed is too small. Really, he could've made it work if he'd wanted to, but how could he possibly pass up the opportunity? The sex is always good, but there's something about fucking Keith's daughter in his own bed that makes it a thousand times better.

Especially since Keith's daughter is apparently in the mood to take control tonight.

He pulls her with him when she pushes him down on the bed, straddling his lap and unbuckling his belt, and when she swats his hands away from her, he can't supress a grin. The high of doing this in Keith's bed makes him willing to let her have her way this time, to just lean back and put his hands behind his head and watch her.

And he'd never admit it, but the way she moves, eyes closed, biting her lower lip as she rides him... as long as he remembers this, he'll never need porn again.

~

Veronica's screams wake him.

"Dad, help! Help!"

Instinct has him reaching for his sidearm (which is on the floor instead of at his side) before he realizes that she's asleep. Exhaling sharply, he reaches over and shakes her awake, and it's not until he recognizes her whimpering about heat and burns as she shrinks away from him that he realizes.

"Christ." He knocks half the shit off of Keith's nightstand before finally locating the lamp and turning it on. It's almost instantaneous; the light comes on and she's taking deep shuddering breaths, fighting to hide herself behind another role. He tells her quietly, as close as he ever gets to comfort, "Veronica, you're fine."

"I know." Her face is streaked with tears and her voice breaks in the middle of the phrase, and he shakes his head, abandoning common sense and reaching out for her. His arm feels awkward around her shoulders like this (he's not the comforting type) and it takes a minute for her to relax enough that she doesn't feel like a spring wound too tight. Even when she does, she doesn't cling to him or cry on his shoulder; she just sits there quietly, barely leaning into him, and he finally asks, "You okay?"

She pulls back, wiping her eyes and nodding. "Yeah."

When she reaches for him again, her mouth finding his, he knows exactly what a shrink would say.

If he were a better person... but he's not.

  
   
   


**II.**   


_"We cling to what is gone. Is there anything in this life but grief?" -- Illyria, Angel_

  


   
Veronica really hadn't set out to eavesdrop. If it had been some kind of police matter, some case with private details and a victim, she's sure she would've interrupted. But it's not a police matter. (Or maybe it is, but the victim doesn't really matter anymore, does she?) It's her dad in the office arguing with Lamb. "Damn it, Don, you had no right to tell her about Lianne."

"Hey, she's the one who came in asking me to track down your wife and arrest her," a chair squeaks as Lamb undoubtedly does his patented 'lean back and smirk'. "You should be proud, Keith. Not many kids would come turn in one of their parents like that. She's almost as cold as you are."

The crashing sound makes her jump, and there's a low murmur of voices that she can't quite distinguish for a few moments. (But boy, does she try.) She can hear the tone of her father's voice, but even straining to make out the words, all she manage to hear is, "used to be," before she hears movement and hides around the corner.

~

She hasn't knocked when entering Lamb's office in over a year. (It would be like admitting he deserved respect as Sheriff, which... as Lilly used to say, just _no_.) Even when she was looking at a second degree felony charge for manufacturing (badly produced) fake IDs, she walked right in. Okay, so she brought donuts to soften him up that time, but this time she's not looking at jail time if he gets pissy with her.

In a way, she thinks she's looking at something worse.

She stops halfway in the doorway -- _Don't wuss out now, Mars. You want to know what happened._ \-- and waits for him to look up from the mess of papers split between the desk and the floor. When he does, she asks calmly, rationally, "How did my mother die?"

He just looks at her for a long moment and finally nods toward the chair. "Sit down."

She doesn't sit in the chair. (As long as she lives, she refuses to _ever_ sit in that chair again.) Instead she slides into the leather armchair on the opposite side of the office, the armchair she recently spent an entire day in reading Cosmo and generally annoying him.

When he doesn't roll his eyes or make some mocking comment about it, she thinks maybe she doesn't want to know how her mother died after all. The last time he gave her that look, it was when he was telling her that Lianne was dead, and if how she died is that bad...

He pulls a file out of one of the desk drawers, and her stomach lurches as he holds it out to her. He snaps it back at the last second, raising an eyebrow at her outstretched hand and giving her a look that's uncomfortably close to pity. "You sure you wanna know?"

Even if she didn't, that would _make_ her want to know. She doesn't need Lamb of all people _protecting_ her. She just glares at him and takes the file, steeling herself as she flips it open and leafs through the pages. She's surprised to find that she recognizes Lamb's filing system straight off -- the file is put together exactly the way her dad organizes his; timelines up front, reports cross-referenced with labeled pictures, case notes in chronological order...

And M.E. reports with autopsy results last.

~

She doesn't understand the M.E. report. It's too wordy (_extreme cirrhosis of the liver_), too cold (_approximately five-six, one-hundred twenty pounds_), too _Greek_ and _Latin_, and she hates more than anything that she has to ask Lamb to explain it to her.

(And she's _so_ going to spend a few hours online tonight puzzling it out so she never has to ask again.)

Lamb breaks it down into cold, concise phrases that make too much sense.

"So, basically, she killed herself," Veronica summarizes, her head spinning and her stomach rolling, and oh, god, she is _not_ going to let herself lose it right now. "That's it, right?"

"The M.E. thinks accidental overdose. Probably her first time trying it, but I'd have to get the tox screen to tell that for sure," Lamb nods, glancing back at the report like he hadn't just read it to her. (It's still better than him looking at her with pity. She'll never be desperate enough about anything to need _his_ pity.) "She probably didn't set out to kill herself."

"Yeah, that makes it so much better," she shakes her head bitterly before tampering her emotions back down. "Can you get the tox screen?"

 

**[looks the same but there's something missing]**

Tuesdays and Thursdays, Veronica sees a psychiatrist.

This is most definitely _not_ her choice.

Even knowing that her father keeps things from her in the name of 'protecting' her, she still can't bring herself to argue too vehemently with him about this. The therapy thing is more for his peace of mind than hers, so he feels like he's doing something to help her through this 'difficult time'. So, for fifty minutes, twice a week, she sits on a leather couch, plays with a Rubik's cube, and ignores the best shrink her father's money can buy.

The shrink, whose name she deliberately forgets, asks her in that irritatingly calm voice, "How are you feeling about your mother's death?"

Rolling her eyes, Veronica answers, "All warm and fuzzy. It's the gift that keeps on giving."

Not like it matters what she says, she knows. Whether she confesses everything in her head at any given moment or acts like Madison Sinclair, either way, at the end of the hour, she's going to leave with a prescription in her hand.

She never fills the prescriptions. She has a nice little stack of them in a drawer.

They're about as useful as the actual 'therapy'.

~

There's an instant right after something so horrible and unexpected happens where there's just... nothing. Emptiness. Like someone has hollowed you out inside, and you know you _should_ be feeling something, but it's just... there's nothing there.

Seeing the look on Duncan's face when she asked where Lilly was, that was the first time Veronica felt it. Deep in her head, she knew right then that Lilly was _gone_, and she was so hollow she could've shattered from one sharp blow. She doesn't quite remember running out to the pool deck, but she remembers the instant her brain registered what she was seeing there -- Lilly's lifeless body, blood pooled beneath her head, and it slammed so much grief and horror back into that hollow, empty space that it made her physically ill.

The second time, she opened her eyes and found herself looking up at Shelly Pomeroy's ceiling. It took a few seconds that time -- just waking up and not knowing where she was right away wasn't that bad (it wasn't like she could've ended up in Mexico or something), but seeing her underwear on the floor and the condom wrapper? That's when she felt absolutely gutted inside.

And now there's her mother's funeral.

She doesn't cry. She thinks she probably should, but the tears just aren't coming. And it's not even that she's so shocked and hurt that she's numb; she's just oddly... detatched. Like she just happened upon this person's funeral and it seemed like the right thing to do to stand there and look solemn and dignified.

But it's not some random person, it's her mom.

She just doesn't care.

~

The day after her mother's funeral, Veronica spends two hours kicking Wallace's ass at Crash Bandicoot (whispering her secrets to his little brother as she went), while Alicia and Keith did the grown-up version of a casual date. There's food, and laughter, and nobody mentions that the music doesn't match what they're eating.

It should feel like a betrayal (the dirt hasn't even settled on her mother's grave yet), but mostly it just feels nice.

_Normal._

And then, the phone rings.

 

**[leave me the hard part, it's all I want]**

Veronica's not quite sure what happened here.

When she walked into Lamb's office and slammed the door, she was pissed off beyond reason (and not suprised in the least) at the sheer arrogance it had to take for him to arrange Crimestoppers to give her the reward money for solving Lilly's murder. Really, who did he think he was? This was the same guy who fucking _laughed_ at her when she reported being raped, and _now_ he's trying to act all helpful?

What the _fuck_?

"Oh, please," he rolls his eyes at her and goes back to looking over the files on his desk, clearly dismissing her. "Hate to break it to you, Mars, but the world doesn't actually revolve around you." Almost as an afterthought, he adds, "Or your daddy."

If her life was a soap opera, she'd have impulsively slapped him like a girl and made a big melodramatic scene that would later be blamed on how 'emotional' and 'overwrought' she was about her mother dying. Instead, she deliberately stalks around his desk and delivers a solid right hook to his jaw that sends him reeling back in his chair, looking utterly astounded that she'd dare to hit him.

And yeah, it's not the best idea to assault a sheriff, but _damn_ did it feel good. She folds her arms over her chest, doesn't bother trying to hide the smirk, and tells him, "You may as well just admit it. I know you're behind it."

She's not a hundred percent sure, but she thinks it was the smirk that pisses him off enough to push things over the line. One second he's sitting in his chair, cradling his jaw as he glares at her, and the next he has her hands pinned at her sides against the desk, and he's already too close when he leans in farther, his face inches away from hers as smirks back at her. "You have no idea what I'm..." he presses in closer, way too much closer into her personal space and she tells herself her breath catches with _disgust_, 'cause it _so_ can't be anything else. He breathes against the shell of her ear, finishing deliberately, "_behind_, Veronica."

_\--if she screams right now--_

_\--she just has to bring her knee up--_

_\--Leo's just outside and he'd--_

_\--get away and stop this now--_

_\--she can stop this now, should stop this now, get away from him, get away..._

_Get away with it._

He moves first, crushing his lips against hers, and this is nothing like anything she's ever had before. Duncan was always sweet and gentle and fairy-tale perfect. Troy was casual, Leo was more passionate, but still always managed to treat her like a virgin he didn't want to spook, and Logan... Logan kissed her like he was afraid he'd break her if he wasn't careful.

Lamb kisses her like he wants it to hurt.

And she kind of likes it.

~

His hands are rough on her skin as he pushes her skirt up around her hips, and she's breathing harsh, hot little gasps against his mouth as he drags her closer, grinding against her in _just_ the _right_...

And she inhales sharply, whimpering as she drags her nails down his forearms and the whole world has narrowed in to his hands and his mouth and the sounds of zippers and torn buttons and reluctant hissed _Yes_'s. She doesn't notice she's biting her lip until she tastes blood, and when he slides inside her with a harsh groan, she stops caring whether or not she's making too much noise.

It's a little like a game she used to play when she was a kid, holding her breath until the world started graying out at the edges and her heart skipped beats and her whole body tingled. Lamb's fingers are rough, demanding, and she can't find the breath to make noise anymore. The world is graying out around the edges, and tiny pinpricks of light are exploding behind her eyelids as she gasps for air. The harder she breathes, the smaller her lungs feel until she can't breathe at all and her heart is skipping beats and her body is tingling, and when she finally comes, it's a little like dying.

And it makes her feel more alive than she has been since Aaron Echolls tried to kill her.


End file.
